Recently I gave a warm
welcome to another Heritage CD, featuring these artists
in a programme of Tudor polyphony. On this disc, which I presume
again consists of reissued material, the musical offerings range
more widely, though Tudor music is once again the backbone of
the programme. Indeed, five of the pieces are included on both
discs. Whether or not the same recordings have been used is
impossible to tell in the absence of any information about the
recordings themselves, but collectors should note the duplication.

It’s the Tudor repertoire that strikes me as the best feature
of this present collection. That’s not to imply that the quality
of the performances varies. On the contrary, the singing is
consistently fine whatever music the choir is singing. But the
later music is less interesting, I find. The items by Attwood
and Goss are pretty dull, to be truthful, even when as well-presented
as is here the case. Others may like Franck’s rather treacly
Panis Angelicus more than I do – and I don’t care at
all for the phrasing adopted by the tenor soloist here, which
is about the only technical blemish I could detect in the entire
programme. Elgar’s Ave verum is dutiful rather than inspired
as a piece of music.

But the pieces by Byrd, Parsons, Sheppard and Tallis are all
superbly crafted and Timothy Brown and his choir turn in immaculate
performances.

The documentation accompanying the disc is pretty basic. No
clues are given as to when or where the recordings were made
– I suspect they were set down in the early 1990s - and it seems
discourteous not to name the organist – or organists, perhaps
– involved in some of the pieces.

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